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WITH the April 30 time limit for the government-imposed lockdown of Luzon less than two weeks away, calls for lifting or at least significantly loosening the “enhanced community quarantine” are growing in volume. As with everything related to the Wuhan Virus pandemic, the solution, once the country reaches that decision point, would be neither simple nor universally satisfactory.

Dozens of self-appointed analysts, medical experts real and imagined, and business associations have offered recommendations for whatever is supposed to come after April 30, optimistically assuming that the date has something other than an arbitrary significance, which it does not. It was simply the Duterte administration’s best guess, based on a wildly overestimated assessment of its own capabilities, of when the country might begin to take steps toward eventually returning to a situation resembling a pre-pandemic norm.

At this point, there is little to give anyone hope that the lockdown can be lifted on schedule, because the government has not yet effectively created the framework by which general community quarantines can be lifted safely: wide-scale testing to accurately determine the extent of the coronavirus infection, isolation of affected persons from the general population, and effective treatment of those people. In other words, the lifting or easing of general quarantines, as socially and economically distressing as they are, can only be determined by circumstances not by date, if we do not want to have to go through all of this again within a few weeks or months.https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x7rblu3?ads_params=contextual&api=postMessage&autoplay=false&id=f1776d46d8d3c34&mute=true&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.manilatimes.net&pubtool=cpe&queue-autoplay-next=true&queue-enable=true&ui-highlight=false

The government is making progress toward having these necessary conditions in place, but at a snail’s pace; so far, the only locality in the country that seems to be properly organized in this regard is the city of Valenzuela. That city has developed its own testing capabilities and a centralized quarantine and treatment facility, and if it would be allowed to proceed by the national government — which has established the nasty habit of putting obstacles in the path of any local government unit that appears to be more competent and productive than Malacañang — Valenzuela would be able to start “clearing” neighborhoods and lifting local restrictions.

The real dilemma is that, while the lockdown is necessary to address the real problem — that there is a highly infectious and potentially lethal virus spreading through the population — it is creating others that make it increasingly difficult to maintain. Based on the average period of time small and medium enterprises can remain viable without revenue — 27 to 45 days — we are now within the window of time in which businesses would begin failing on a massive scale. On an individual level, the population is clearly approaching a breaking point as well; the loss of incomes, severe supply constraints on food and basic necessities in many areas, and sheer emotional strain are taking an obvious toll, with more and more people pushing back against the restrictions imposed by the government.

The Duterte administration has responded in the only fashion it seems to know, by threatening to impose even greater restrictions if “quarantine violations” do not cease, and in fact blaming pasaway Filipinos for the country’s having the highest incidence of infections in Southeast Asia (an assertion that was swiftly and with great vigor smashed on Friday by the Philippine Star, which provided extensive published records to make its case).

The only real option for the government is to work more swiftly to implement the test-isolate-treat model, “clearing” areas one by one, so that restrictions can be progressively lifted. Centralized management of that effort has proven to be too slow at best, and so it must be delegated, with the national government limiting its concern to controlling movement between local government unit jurisdictions.

That, of course, is unlikely to happen, given the administration’s antagonism so far toward local initiative in any place that is not Davao. But with pressure building against a lockdown that has given the public a perception, fairly or not, that it represents the limit of the government’s ability to combat the pandemic, we might hope that it may eventually resign itself to delegating the heavy lifting.

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One move that might help, although making a change of command in the middle of battle is ordinarily not recommended, is to remove embattled Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd and replace him with someone better suited to the position. A majority of the Philippine Senate certainly seems to think so; a resolution signed by 15 senators was filed last week calling for Duque to step down due to, among other things, his “failure of leadership.”

Duque’s response to the formal criticism of the legislators was emblematic of why he ought to be replaced. Rather than make a substantial case for keeping his job, he first said that he would answer the Senate’s criticism “in due time” — apparently missing the point that a formal resolution makes the due time “now” — then complained that he was “hurt” by the Senate’s resolution and chided the lawmakers for not promoting “unity.”

Someone who expresses more concern with his personal standing in a position rather than the demands of the job at hand does not have his priorities in order. Even if Duque is doing the job as well as anyone else could at this point, the fact that an entire house of Congress disapproves of him is reason enough to let him go. His call for “unity” was, in fact, completely correct; only unfortunately for him, the way to maintain it, should he be unable to convince the Senate of his effectiveness, is for him to resign or be relieved.